Furthest APRS ping

I think that I may own the record for the longest ping on the APRS network. Saturday, one of the stations yielded these data:

ECHO 2 2010-10-09 18:54:16 2010-10-09 20:19:13 CN90VA > QF56KN 7596.3 miles 243? 2010-10-09 20:19:13

Note the range is almost 7600 miles! How cool is that! I guess that j-pole in the wingtip works pretty well - thanks Pete!

cheers,
greg

Greg,
You hold the distance record but the highest altitude is mine 185K+. Cool thing is this APRS tracker,isn't it?

Hmmm

Hey Greg,

I didn't realize we sold you the Turbo J-pole. That costs an extra hundo......

Shhh....... Don't tell Mills, he will want one, too!!!!

Maximum range?

One of my clients recently hit the International Space Station at a range in excess of 700 miles with an MT-AIO. No GPS Skulduggery involved! Glad to hear that Pete's antennas have 400 dB of gain though! Keep up the good work!

Allen
VHS

petehowell said:

Hey Greg,

I didn't realize we sold you the Turbo J-pole. That costs an extra hundo......

Shhh....... Don't tell Mills, he will want one, too!!!!

Click to expand...

OK, now I get it...the good stuff goes to the -9A guys...I see how it works!

On Greg's ping...is that for real, or an aprs.fi data glitch? I know Vlad's 185K is a data glitch, but Alan's friend's hit on the ISS is real (right?). Could an over 7K mile ping be real (skip, ducting, etc.)? Just wonderin'.

So Alan has the highest ping, Greg has the farthest ping, and Vlad has the highest altitude recorded...

...but perhaps I have the highest ping rate per minute and ping rate per mile with the following track, from a formation practice flight with 3 lead changes and a LOT of maneuvering:



Now that may not necessarily be a good thing, as upon landing I had a message from my wife that Alan had called and said I was pinging sites all over northern California nearly every 10 seconds (smart beaconing), and had some PO'd HAMs out there. I then realized I had my tracker in its secondary profile (for low altitude or sparse territory tracking, includes Wide 1-1 and Wide 2-1) rather than my primary profile (normal hi altitude X-C tracking, Wide 1-1 only). So I was spitting out red BB's during a lot of rendezvous turns and other maneuvering. As I mentioned in my VM Alan, my apologies...will keep it on PRI when doing form work!!

So its not a contest I'm trying to start, but just a sidenote to the thread...

Now this track was with a Howell J-pole, this time in the wingtip, in a "Flying M" configuration:



This configuration showed SWR sweet spots at 143 MHz (near 144.39) and at 152 MHz (near my SAR radio freq of 150.025), so its been working well, and is switchable between the Howell J-pole in my right gear leg. So far, so good, and I've removed one belly whip from my plane.

We're also working on testing J-poles, Bazookas (not bubble gum or weapons ) and even chopped and channeled belly whips in my other wingtip...so far not with a ton of success...but that's a topic for another thread...

Cheers,
Bob

Flyin' M.......

I'm pretty sure the Flyin' M is the lowest drag, highest gain configuration we have seen for the J-Pole. It may be the basis for our new marketing campaign for the Holiday Season!! I also may declare it Eco-friendly to sell to the green crowd. I suppose the child labor aspects of production may limit the appeal for some, tho.

I just need to figure out if I can afford Mr. Mills as our internet spokesmodel. My people will call his people and we'll power lunch.......

Greg - The 7000 mile ping sounds suspect to me. I've been seeing a lot of odd pings on APRS.fi lately, but if you have the string that shows it - it is yours to claim!

This ham radio stuff is still really fun to play with and the people I have met are the best.

Long path

This path is accurate. Indiana to Wisconsin while sitting on the ground! Of course, some may say I cheated a little

http://aprs.fi/?call=k9qv&dt=1282608000&mt=roadmap&z=11&timerange=3600

Range spoofs

When I test trackers, I often use a GPS simulator program to generate data, and it defaults to the coast of Africa....People are often surprised to see their car flying at 1500 meters over the Somali coast....

Data recovery with APRS takes a pretty high signal margin, and I would be pretty surprised if an actual beacon survived tropospheric ducting, moon-bounce, or some of the other more arcane paths. But its remotely possible.

73,

Allen
VHS

[Oops, got a little too political for forums rules. S. Buchanan]

So, Pete, how do it verify the string? I agree, it looks suspect, but I do routinely get >100 mile pings.

greg

Good Question

Hi Greg,

I don't know - I suppose the first thing would be to contact the owner of the digi to see if the location was accurate at the time of the ping - could be the GPS was wacky at that point.

There is every possibility it is correct, who knows!!